“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”

– Western Union internal memo, 1876.

“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?”

– David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.”

– A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face not Gary Cooper.”

– Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With The Wind.”

“A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.”

– Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’Cookies.

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”

– Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”

– Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

“If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.”

– Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.'”

– Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

“Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”

– 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work.

“You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can’t be done. It’s just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training.”

– Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the “unsolvable” problem by inventing Nautilus.

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.”

– Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

A group of more than 100 law professors is asking Congress to apply to the justices of the nation’s top court an ethics code that applies to other federal judges.

The move follows recent criticism of several U.S. Supreme Court justices for attending private political meetings and accepting travel funds from private donors, reports the Washington Post.

Congress should create “mandatory and enforceable rules to protect the integrity of the Supreme Court,” the law profs say in a letter today to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. While other courts do not allow an individual judge to determine the propriety of his or her own conduct, “inexplicably we still allow Supreme Court justices to be the sole judge of themselves on recusal issues.”

What does Tom Cruise, China, and Top Gun have to do with issues relating to plagiarism? Well everything, Just recently, it was discovered that Maverick, Iceman, Goose, Viper, and Jester were all starring in a Chinese Military training video. To learn more about China’s use of Mav’s sweet moves have a look at the recent CNN video.

The issue of plagiarism, however, is not something just reserved for the Chinese Military. Blogger, Tammy Lenski, has written an interesting piece on what to do when you have been plagiarized. Tammy gives lots of valuable tips on how to protect yourself. Here are just two of them from her article entitled,

Use the contact link on the infringing site to reach out to the site owner, make sure they’re aware that they’ve used copyrighted material, and request that they remove it within two business days.

If that doesn’t work, locate the infringing site’s webhosting company and submit what’s a copyright infringement notice, also called a DMCA notice. DMCA stands for Digital Millenium Copyright Act and there’s more information on it in the links below. In almost all cases, this resolves it, though sometimes it can take weeks. The resolution may be anything from the post being removed to the webhost taking down the site.

Tammy has listed many valuable resources to which you can go to if you are plagiarized. To read her complete valuable and informative article, click here.

I recently saw a great article that explained the may benefits of thanksgiving. Not just the holiday of thanksgiving, but the conscious act of giving thanks to people. I thought it would be interesting…

The article discusses how thanks can be helpful for your health, lower stress, and is generally beneficial. It reminds me to be thankful on a daily basis. To read the article, click here.

In that light, I wish to thank everyone who reads this blog, everyone who has supported me, and everyone who has helped me through my long journey.